Fun in Malibu (Part 2 of 2)

A few quick notes about both rides in general before I post about the second ride of the day ...

1. I changed my saddle (seat) back to the saddle that came with my bike. It's a lot smaller and a lot narrower. It has less padding, but my shorts have padding and my butt has become used to being on the bike for long periods of time.

I think the change had a huge impact though. My butt hurt more, but I didn't feel cramping. When I pre-rode Counting Coup with the original narrow saddle I never cramped. Then I used my super big padded saddle and ended up cramping all over during the actual race.

I'm sticking with the narrow saddle and we'll see how it goes.

2. I tried a new sports drink mix called "e gel" and it seemed to work really well. It has 0 sugar in it (unlike Cytomax) and that means it won't leave my water bottles all disgusting after a ride.

Last time I washed my bottles I thought there was dirt on the outside of it, but it turned out to be mold and mildew on the _inside_. I can't even count how many times I've shrugged off the visual cues thinking it was dirt and then used the bottle. Hahaha.

Anyways back to the Malibu adventure ...

We ended up driving around after the first ride looking for lunch - which took longer than I thought it would. Andrew decided on La Salsa and we all ate quite a bit since we were empty from the first ride of the day. This was a mistake on my part. Later on the tacos, rice and chips tried to escape my belly on a tough climb.

Unloading the Fit:



It took us longer and longer to load and unload our bikes as the day went on. The park we were in had some old sets from the TV show M*A*S*H and we were excited to see what the deal was. I had mental pictures of huge fields with buildings and old props, but I was wrong.

The trail started like most trails do ... on a fire road. After a brief period on that, we got to a section called "Crags". It's named "Crags" because of how rocky it is. It was a pretty fun little singletrack because of all the obstacles we had to clear. We also ran into a boy-scout troop that was impressed that we were riding over all the rocks and roots.

After "Crags" we hit the M*A*S*H stuff.

On an abandoned car:



That's right. It's an abandoned jeep. From M*A*S*H. With us in it. From M*A*S*H.

After taking a few pictures, we rode on to the climb. I say _the_ climb because on this trail there was really only one climb. It was only maybe 4 miles (5 at the very most) long, but ascended about 2,500 over that stretch. That just means there were some steep parts, making the climbing not so enjoyable.

As a side note ... we had met another rider before we started and he bummed some water and food off of Andrew. He said the climb we were going to do was tough and warned us by suggesting we do the trail backwards. Andrew thought the guy was a weak rider and we all decided to ignore his advice. Well, the guy was right. It was a tough climb.

It was very hot for some reason even though it was around 5pm when we were on the mountain. There were some pretty tough technical sections that took a lot out of me when I climbed them. After one particular section we all stopped to take pictures and rest and all three of us were soaked in sweat. Andrew squeezed his shirt and water just came pouring out.

Me climbing:



It doesn't look that bad in the picture, but trust me ... it was steep and after 3-4 miles of non-stop climbing in the heat ... it's not easy.

A view from the climb:



We eventually hit what I thought was the end of the climbing. I was wrong, but the worst of the climbing was behind us at this point. We stopped near a gate on the fire road and ate and drank before moving on.

The next landmark was a small climb into some odd looking rocks. When we got there we weren't sure if the trail really went over the rocks we saw. They looked steep and it was far from obvious that the trail continued into the rocks. We decided to give it a try.

We ended up hiking our bikes up almost all of the rocks to get to the most exciting part of the entire trail.

Matt on the rocks:



You can see some of the rock formations above. There was a ton of it all around. Really cool looking stuff, but also a bit scary. You don't know what is around the next corner and after riding around 30 miles, you're pretty tired and that's when mistakes happen.

I was hiking down a large rock "waterfall" when Matt came up to the top of the same section. He road down the entire thing without a problem, but I was worried he'd eat it. I finished by riding down the bottom half of it, which gave Matt an idea. We should go back and take videos of us riding down the entire thing.

My video:



It looks pretty boring, but trust me ... just like the climbing picture, the true angle and grade is lost in the video. It was more impressive in person. Haha.

I have videos of Matt and Andrew doing it, as well as another version of my descent, but since it's my blog, I'm only posting my video. I also have a bunch of pictures of us going up, but those aren't that great either. There is a link in the previous post to those pictures if anyone is curious.

After spending a lot of time taking pictures and videos, we moved on to the rest of the ride. It was pretty boring as it involved more climbing (I thought we were done?!) and a steep, fast fire road descent.

We ended up hitting one short singletrack section near the top of the mountain and after I came out of it I looked around to find no one else. No Matt and no Andrew. Haha. They came out before me and took off. I made all the right decisions though at each fork in the road and found them without incident.

The very end of the trail had a nice singletrack, but it was way too short and not quite fun enough to combat the climbing we had to do. It really wasn't worth it at that point.

The last few miles of the official route were on the side of a very narrow road. This part sucked big time. I don't like riding a few feet away from cars going 50-60 mph. Especially on a tight windy road. Needless to say we won't be doing that again.

By the time we got back to the Honda, it was around 7pm I think. We met at Andrew's place at the start of the day at 7am, so it had been a long day. Even though it was a long time to be gone, it was totally worth it. I will definitely remember this trip as one of the best days I've ever had on a bike.